Cheap plants, less nitrate! POTHOS

[FreshyFresh]

Little change of plans for me:

My 2L (0.5g) Marina air bubbler breeder box came in today, so I set it up with the pot of "golden pothos" from Lowes. My original intent was to set it up on my goldfish's 55g, but this breeder box fits the rim of my 75g no problem. The frame thickness is just shy of 1.5", so it looks like this large size breeder box will fit up to 1.5" tank frames with no problem. This thing moves quite a bit of water. It filled itself in just a few minutes.

I rinsed the plant and roots real well and cut the roots back about 2" before placing it in the breeder box. I'm not sure if this is going to be too much sunlight for the plant and roots, so it's a trial and error thing for me. This southern facing window gets some direct sunlight when the trees are bare.

 

[carbene]

Great thread! I've gone through a little better than half of the ~140 pages but still have a question! For those of you with pothos plants in their main tank, where the roots become completely exposed to air during water changes, do you find this is detrimental to the plant? I've read remarks elsewhere where exposing the roots to air once a week is like putting the plant through "transplant shock" every week and eventually it will wither and die due to this? Has anyone experienced this with pothos in your tank?

if you leave individual strand of roots exposed to air too long (1hr+), it'll slow down the growth rate. Simple solution is to bunch them up together to keep the inner clump moist.

 

[FreshyFresh]

Thanks carbene!

I'm a bit concerned about the amount of light for the pothos in the top tank, but the roots will always stay wet in the breeder box. Cool thing with them is they don't dump back to the tank like a HOB filter will during WCs.. I guess that would be a little awkward if a breeder box did that on you.. LOL.

I did use one of the baskets I pictured a few posts above in the lower tank. The suction cups didn't work out well. They'd loose suction after a few hours, but I do have some algae build up on the back glass, so that might not be helping. I improvised with a few shower curtain clips I bent open and used as hooks to hold a basket to the top/back of the tank. I put a pothos bunch in the lower tank as well. That one wont get quite as much light.

 

[Danh]

Mine are in a southeast facing window and the roots get light too. They get a decent amount of light for most of the day. After about a month they seem to be thriving.

 

[carbene]

thats plenty of light for them. if you dont need to turn on the lights to see, its enough for pothos. theyll grow the fastest with window light. one of my pothos leaves is about one square feet.

 

[Danh]

I was more concerned with them getting too much light. I noticed last night that it looks like a couple of the leaves are too close to my LEDs and they're getting burn spots on them. Even from just a couple of hours of LED a day.

 

[FreshyFresh]

Dan, what type of LED fixture? Can you reposition the plant or light?

 

[Danh]

yes

 

[FreshyFresh]

It's only been about a week and I'm seeing new leaves unrolling/sprouting. The leaves on the bottom tank are growing up towards the window above.

 

[carbene]

its going to overrun your window soon